I mean there's nothing more succinct and to the point than the way these professors put it: "We all know . . . what they're aiming at...Iraq has the second-largest oil reserves in the world." - Noam Chomsky, MIT professor of linguistics "I think we've run out of people's butts to kick and that we essentially want to keep the butt-kicking going." - Jim Rego, assistant professor of chemistry at Swarthmore College a preemptive war against Iraq "takes us back to the notion of the rule of the jungle" - Eric Foner, professor of 19-century American history at Columbia University It is nothing less than "the first step in Bush's plan to transform our country into an aggressor nation that cannot tolerate opposition." - Glenda Gilmore, an assistant professor of history of the American South at Yale University a U.S. war against Iraq would be just a diversion created by "Israeli apologists and [U.S.] government officials" who share a "tribal affiliation" - Mazin Qumsiyeh, associate professor of genetics at Yale University All are very correct and accurate observations.
New Yorkers who think NY Times and WSJ have too many words and not enough pictures. That is to say 80% of English speakers who ride the subway with me.
my favorite part: "The time has come for adult supervision of the faculty and administrators at many American campuses. Especially as we are at war, the goal must be for universities to resume their civic responsibilities. This can be achieved if outsiders (alumni, state legislators, non-university specialists, parents of students and others) take steps to create a politically balanced atmosphere, critique failed scholarship, establish standards for media statements by faculty and broaden the range of campus discourse. " ...and yet no mention of a politically balanced newspaper. funny that.
NYC has 2 main dailies, one (the Post) is right-leaning and the other (the Times) is left-leaning. What's unbalanced about that? Alex
Yes, Iraq has oil. A lot of oil. Would you kindly tell me how replacing Saddam Hussein does anything at all for any US oil company? You can't, and neither can that leftist lunatic Chomsky. We can't, aren't going to, have no intention of and couldn't get away with it if we tried, to somehow "seize" the Iraqi oilfields. And whatever regime rep-laces Saddam Hussein and the Baathists (and I'm sorry to disappoint you, but he IS going to be replaced, and very soon) will not give anybody anything. And the USA, despite what dolts like you and Chomsky seem to feel, is not just a collection of oil pirates out looting the world's resources. (That's simply more left-wing hate talk, and nobody with two brain cells takes it seriously. There's nothing worse, IMO, than people who believe their own political propaganda.) Yet, seizing Iraq'a oil is precisely what this sort of stupidity implies. However, nobody at all, not you, not Chomsky, not anybody, will actually come out and SAY this because it is too nutty even for him and obviously a lie. So you say things like "It's all about Big Oil" and everyone nods knowingly. You know nothing.
It will open up Iraq's oil for American consumption. Who claimed we want to seize Iraqi oil fields? Where does Chomsky say we want to seize Iraqi oil fields? Of course not - they'll sell it to us. Again, who has claimed that Saddam's replacement will give us the oil fields? I hate oil pirates. Oil pirates suck.
You are forgetting the Daily News which also leans to the right. Plus, Newsday on Long Island and Star-Ledger in Jersey are widely read in the NYC area. Regarding the professors, conservatives have been getting all-red-in-the-face about political views of college professors for decades. They always think it is spoiling the minds of our countries intelectual youth. But somehow, the country continues to be relatively split between the left and the right and is generally moderate. So, it doesn't look like college professors have having the impact that conservatives fear. Murf
Noam Choamsky would have asked the SS to delay his gassing for 5 minutes so he could finish his last screed about how the US started WWII to get hold of the Romanian oil fields.
If Noam Chomsky didn't exist, doctrinaire conservatives would have to invent him to have an excuse to go ballistic. The biggest difference between professors and plumbers is that nobody cares what plumbers think about politics. I am sure that if anyone did, it would be quite easy to find plumbers with similarly out there (or just out of step) views. Does this sort of discussion really just come down to the fact the more education you have, the more likely you are to be somewhere on the leftward half of the political spectrum? Conservatives vent about the liberal politics of academe, and liberals vent about bible thumpers. It's all just preaching to the choir.
You are right. No one really cares what plummers think. But does Noam Chomsky really have more political insight than my mother (a high school drop out) or is he any more correct than my father or me? The difference is that the thoughts of plummers are not trumpted on the editorial pages of newspapers. Parents do not pay $10,000 of year to have a plummer teach their children (unless their children are in an apprentice program for the plummers union). And you are right able the bible thumpers. Both have a captive audience. Both are elevate by their audience. And both can sway their audience. (Funny though how there is less concern over the liberal churches forays into politics).
I think that's mostly because the liberal churches have more or less traded places with the conservative ones in terms of political visibility. At least I am not much aware of liberal churches or their more visible leaders being active in the political arena the way they were in the 60s, and the way some fundamentalists are now.
I live in Brooklyn, and it seems that in the black churches, and in the "black" churches here, there is no question that the churches throw lots of support behind candidates. While most of the support s for Democrats of course, some repblicans, like D'Amato and Pataki, have goten appreciable support from an appreciable number of these churches. And let's not forget Reverand Al Sharpton. I do agree with you somewhat about the liberal "white" churches. They are active politically, but not like the 1960s.
We already have sources for all the oil we can burn. "Opening up" Iraq's oil changes nothing as far as the world oil market is concerned. Long term contracts, the spot market, doesn't matter. Oil is oil, the price is fixed by a cartel (it's called OPEC - you may have heard of it) and nobody pays any attention to where any of it comes from. He doesn't, as I said. Read what I actually said and come up with a coherant response. Sell it to us, sell it to whomever (and they're already selling as much as they can pump through Syria) doesn't matter. And again, NOBODY, although it's most certainly implied. What else does "Going to kill young Americans for Oil" mean? And just for the record, the three organized entities trying to overthrow Hussein have already stated that the US will get no special deals on Iraqi oil. Cash on the barrelhead, OPEC price. You know, just like everybody else, everyplace else. Yes, but at least the "Oil Pirates" theory at least has some rationality. The "Bush and Cheney just want to see people killed because they love war" theory is too absurd to bother with.
I think you're mistaken on that one, at least in general terms. I don't remember enough details to provide a link, but several months ago, a report on military options came out of this administration that discussed preventitive (not just pre-emptive) nuclear strikes as a legitimate possibility. Of course, it wasn't a proposed near term action, but clearly, there are people with meaningful access to the Bush Whitehouse, who would be willing to go down that particular slippery slope. I don't see how anyone could do that without an un-healthy fondness for conflict and megadeath.
It's funny you say Daily News leans to the right since conservatives claim it leans the other way. It seems to be the same way on the Spanish-language side as both El Diario and Hoy tend to be conservative. Anyway, it's hard to take the Post or Daily News seriously since their political/international coverage is equally shallow/sensationalist and generally panders to whatever the popular view is.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/iraq010720_cooley.html Sources say American refiners prefer the Iraqi Kirkuk and Basrah oil varieties, because of their low sulfur content. When they can remove the sulfur more easily, refiners can make higher profits. Many refiners have been investing heavily in special equipment to remove sulfur from crude oil, after the Environmental Protection Agency and the Justice Department reached agreements with nine refineries last March to reduce air pollution. As part of the deal, they also agreed to collectively pay a $9.5 million civil penalty under the Clean Air Act and spend $5.5 million on environmental projects in communities affected by the refineries' pollution, the newsletter Alexander's Gas and Oil Connections reported. The companies are required to spend an estimated $400 million for installing pollution controls. American refiners' thirst for Iraqi oil has been ongoing. Reuters reported on May 12, 2000, that since 1998, U.S. imports of Iraqi crude oil have doubled to 750,000 bpd, 9 percent of total U.S. oil imports. Oil industry sources tell ABCNEWS that the U.S. companies most heavily involved at present are Chevron, Exxon-Mobil, Bayoil and Koch Petroleum, which use it in their refineries in Louisiana and Texas.
Wow. . .this is a shock. Our hypocrisy knows no bounds. Hussein is the great devil but we still buy most of his oil. Even while our armed forces are carrying out blockade operations. The good news for Bush is once he gets rid of Saddam then he can cut the Russians out as middlemen.
Of course we buy Iraqi oil. If you didn't know that you just weren't paying attention. And who is carrying out "blockade operations"? There is an International, United Nations sponsored embargo on Iraqi oil exports over certain limits. Just throwing the term "hypocrisy" around makes you feel so superior though, doesn't it? And "cutting out the Rusiians as middlemen" is the most colossal piece of ignorance I can imagine. How does "Bush" cut anyone out of anything? Are you saying his personal cut of US Oil profits will go up? Sheer biased nonsense. And here's a clue, bert old bean: the Russians interest in all this has nothing whatever to do with the Bagman the President of the US, according to your theory, sends Putin at the end of each month. But you wouldn't understand just where the Russian position on world oil prices is, would you? That's because your energy is focused on the POTUS "cutting out the middleman". Have you been screened for paranoid delusions lately? Is it any wonder you can't have a rational discussion anymore?
Re: Re: Don't you love these professors? That's all over the country. But the situation in black churches and white evangelical churches is different. (I didn't say "better," i said "different. Just to emphasize.) In the white churches, the involvement is based on religious stands on moral issues. Abortion, cloning, sex education, etc. (At least originally. For a while, and maybe again, some of these groups were trying to make tax rates a biblical issue and other nonsense like that.) There's a sense that the church's stand on these issues is holy and the opponents are unholy. (To ward off the inevitable misunderstanding...so long as the evangelicals restrict themselves to moral issues when they do this, and so long as they don't foment hate against their opponents, I don't have a problem with this. If they try to say that opposing a cut in the capital gains tax is unbiblical, that's a different story.) In the black churches, it's more like, look, we're all black folk here. These politicians don't hate black folks, but those ones do. Vote for these guys. (That's what I see here in North Carolina anyway, where the Reeps race bait aLOT. Maybe it's different in other areas.)
I did. "Shock" equals sarcasm. The question is why is our government trying to hide it? Are our naval ships in the Gulf now flying the UN flag? That's news to me. No but how do you define buying oil from an enemy supposedly bent on our destruction? Some people call it treason. I call it hypocrisy. Does using the term"colossal" make you feel superior? Sounds like BS to me. What did industry did Bush work in? Who gives him financial support in his campaigns? Frankly I don't give a *************** about the Russian position on oil prices. Do you think our patriotic refineries will need the Russians as middlemen after this war is over? You use middlemen when you do not want to show your involvement. Not recently. My medical plan does not cover it. Not when you have individuals who buy every piece of BS that's handed them by their government.
Re: Re: Re: Don't you love these professors? As the head of the venerable old civil rights organization theCongress on Racial Equality (CORE) in New York said last week: "For the last ten years, the Democrats have scared black people into voting for them by telling them that the Republicans were racists. That dog didn't hunt in this election" Sorry Dave, but the African American population may just be waking up to the lies. Would you mind giving me an example of Republican "race baiting"? Just one. Because it seems that these days the race baiters are all holed up in the Democrat Party, and led around by the house boys like Jesse and Al and Co. (Question: Now that Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond are retiring, who are the oldest "racists"in the Senate? Answer: KKK recruiter Robert Byrd, 85, and Fritz Hollings, 82, who, as Governor of South Carolina, had the Confederate flag incorporated into the state flag in 1965 in response to the Civil Rights act.Democrats? Oh, well, that makes it different, right?)